Family Law Commons^™

Guardianship Laws: Reform Efforts In Virginia, Harriette Haile Shivers

University of Richmond Law Review

During the decade following 1978, six statewide initiatives addressed the need for reform in the Virginia guardianship system. In 1988, the General Assembly established a joint subcommittee to evaluate the status of guardianship in the Commonwealth and to make recommendations to enhance the existing program to ensure the protection of citizens who entrust their lives and property to the guardianship system. Additionally, prompted by the urgent need for a public response to the shortage of available guardians, the General Assembly directed the Department of Social Services to examine the possibility of reserving public guardianship for use only as a last …

The "Gag Rule" Revisited: Physicians As Abortion Gatekeepers, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To the surprise of many and the dismay of some, the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself last term to proclaim a national compromise on the question of abortion. The Court's announced truce, an elaboration on Justice O'Connor's "undue burden" idea, is pragmatic in design but unlikely to prove stable in practice. The three justices who spoke for the Court disparaged Roe with reluctant praise, then upheld its outer shell on the ground that social expectations and the need to sustain the appearance of the rule of law made it impolitic to do otherwise. This awkward doctrinal invention seems …

Due Process

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn M. Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Child Protection Legal Process: Comparing The United States And Great Britain, Donald N. Duquette

Articles

The legal response to child maltreatment-or the risk of child maltreatment-varies greatly from society to society and has been little studied, in part because of the idiosyncrasies of community values, social organization, history and legal traditions.2 Cross-country comparison of child abuse and neglect is especially difficult because the ambiguity of social standards and the imprecision of terms used makes it difficult to define the specific behavior one is studying. Even though child maltreatment is widely prohibited, the definition of what actually constitutes child abuse and neglect is not clear within a particular country, much less uniform from one society to …

Before Guardianship: Abuse Of Patient Rights Behind Closed Doors, Peter J. Strauss

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Marital Property Rights In Transition, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

The subject of "marital property rights" is very timely because those rights are in a state of transition. The term "marital property rights" covers a vast multitude of rights or interests conferred by law on persons who occupy the status of spouse. This lecture is divided into four discrete, yet related segments. The first segment addresses how the law allocates original ownership between spouses in a marriage. The second segment turns to the intestate share of the surviving spouse. This is not a topic that high-powered estate planners get involved in very much because intestate estates are usually fairly small. …

Procedural Due Process Rights Of Incarcerated Parents In Termination Of Parental Rights Proceedings: A Fifty State Analysis, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

Disruption of families through incarceration of parents has become an increasingly serious problem over the past decade. The prison population has grown dramatically, and for women prisoners the increases in the population are particularly striking. From 1980 through 1990, the number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons increased from 13,420 to 43,845, an increase of 227 percent. In a single year, from 1988 to 1989, the number of incarcerated women increased by 24.4 percent. In 1990 there were an additional 37,844 women in local jails. For men the prison population increased by 130 percent from 316,401 to 727,398 …

Judicial Review Of Academic Student Evaluations: A Comment On Susan 'M' V. New York Law School From Those Who Litigated It, Harold Weinberger, Andrew Schepard

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Susan "M" v. New York Law School is the most recent decision of a highest court of a state that vindicates the principle of judicial noninterference in academic evaluation of students. Susan"M" has become quite noteworthy, spawning both a major recent law review article exhaustively analyzing all the relevant precedents and poetry. Discussion of the case generates intense interest, particularly among academics (both faculty and administrators) and law students. The former are generally relieved by its outcome; the latter are distressed that they have to aim their developing litigation skills on targets other than their professors.

Our first purpose in …

Spousal Rights In Our Multiple-Marriage Society: The Revised Uniform Probate Code, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

The transformation of the American family constitutes one of the great phenomenons of the past two decades. The traditional Leave It to Beaver family no longer prevails in American society. To be sure, families consisting of the wage-earning husband, the homemaking and child-rearing wife, and their two joint children still exist. But divorce rates are astonishingly high and remarriage abounds. In fact, there is an increasing prevalence in the population of marriages that are more likely to end in divorce than others-marriages in which one or both partners were divorced before and marriages of couples who cohabited prior to marriage.

A Family Court For Maryland: The Time Has Come, Barbara A. Babb

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Bounds Of Advocacy, Robert H. Aronson

Articles

I was asked, as Reporter for the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers' Bounds of Advocacy, to provide an Introduction to the substantive issues discussed by members of the Committee in succeeding articles. This article will therefore "set the stage" by indicating the need for the Bounds of Advocacy, the charge to the Committee, the process by which the Standards and Comments were drafted, re-drafted, and then re-drafted again, and the appropriate scope, purpose and use of the Standards and Comments.

Racism And Patriarchy In The Meaning Of Motherhood, Dorthy E. Roberts

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Expanding Our Vision Of Legal Services Representation– The Hermanas Unidas Project, Stacy Brustin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Roe V. Wade And The Dred Scott Decision: Justice Scalia's Peculiar Analogy In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Jamin B. Raskin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Babies, Parents, And Grandparents: A Story In Two Cases, Karen Czapanskiy

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Identifying The Best Interests Of The Child In Protection Proceedings: Nine Guidelines For The Child Advocate., Donald N. Duquette

Articles

Increasingly, judges appoint court appointed special advocates (CASAs) to represent children in child abuse and neglect proceedings. Like lawyers, CASAs are charged with looking out for the "best interests" of the child. Unfortunately, although the phrase "best interests" sounds noble, it provides little practical guidance for the child advocate.

M Is For The Many Things, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

People have gotten quite a few things about mothers and motherhood wrong over the last 700 or so years. Educators, historians, jurists, philosophers, physicians, social workers, and theologians have been telling us what mothers are like: what they need, how they feel, what pleases them, how and how well they think. Mothers didn't love their children in the fifteenth century and loved them too much in the 1950s. Black mothers felt no pain in childbirth, and white mothers felt no pleasure in intercourse. The obligations of motherhood, physical and social, have been used to explain why women should not work, …

Pluralism, Parental Preference, And Child Custody, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Modern child custody law faces an important challenge in responding to pluralistic and evolving gender and parenting roles. Professor Scott finds rules favoring maternal custody, joint custody, and the best interests of the child wanting; she argues that the optimal response to the current pluralism in family structure is a rule that seeks to replicate past parental roles. This "approximation" standard promotes continuity and stability for children. It encourages cooperative rather than conflictual resolution of custody, thereby ameliorating the destructive effects of bargaining at divorce. It also recognizes and reinforces role change in individual families, encouraging both parents to invest …

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

The Tragedy Of The Interstate Child: A Critical Reexamination Of The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act And The Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, Anne B. Goldstein

Faculty Scholarship

This Article's thesis is that the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) and the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act (PKPA) have not eliminated jurisdictional competition because a federal system such as ours cannot achieve both of the Acts' two main instrumental goals - preventing or punishing "child snatching" and promoting well-informed decisions. Our system commits custody decisions to sovereign states, which make and modify the decisions according to indeterminate precepts. Such a system will inevitably create some version of the interstate child; so long as these features of our system persist, legislation cannot solve the problem. Therefore, although this Article proposes …

Mandatory Planning For Divorce, Jeffrey E. Stake

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Domestic Relations, Barry B. Mcgough, Andrea G. Alpern

Mercer Law Review

In this survey period, the supreme court stretched its long-arm to overrule two earlier cases and to hold that compliance by a nonresident with a Georgia divorce decree does not insulate the nonresident from jurisdiction in Georgia. With a strong arm, the supreme court held that the child support guidelines are an optional "computational reference" and that trial courts lack the authority to award the federal income tax dependency exemption to noncustodial parents. Overruling a recent decision, the supreme court held that the interlocutory-application subsection, section 5- 6-34(b) of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated ("O.C.G.A."), must be followed in …

Beyond Parens Patriae: Assuring Timely, Informed, Compassionate Decisionmaking For Hiv-Positive Children In Foster Care, Deborah Weimer

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Images Of Battered Women: The Impact Of Domestic Violence On Child Custody Decisions, Naomi R. Cahn

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of child custody decisions is to develop an arrangement that is in the best interest of the child by awarding the child to one or both natural parents.' The critical factors in determining the child's best interest are those that have a direct impact on the child and the child's relationships. The question of which factors are most relevant to the child's best interest is unsettled,' and the answers that have been developed are "highly contingent social construction[s]." This Article examines one factor that is directly related to children's relation- ships and well-being, yet is rarely included in …

International Union V. Johnson Controls, Inc.: Sex-Specific Fetal Protection Policies Of Employers Are Prohibited By Title Vii As Amended By The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Amy H. Moorman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Belcher V. Goins: West Virginia Joins The District Minority Of Jurisdictions In Recognizing A Claim For Loss Of Parental Consortium, Daniel T. Yon

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discretion, Rules, And Law: Child Custody And The Umda's Best-Interest Standard, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

One barrier facing any attempt to devise a uniform law for diverse jurisdictions is the occasional - perhaps even frequent - difficulty of writing rules that will accurately guide judges. The law's ordinary solution to that difficulty is to give judges some measure of discretion. This article inquires into the nature and legitimacy of that technique. It does so by analyzing a particularly controversial provision of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA). Section 402 of that Act states: "The court shall determine custody in accordance with the best interest of the child." It then instructs the court to "consider …

A Tale Of Two Religions: A Contractual Approach To Religion As A Factor In Child Custody And Visitation Disputes, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the role of religious conflict between parents in determining child custody and visitation disputes. It suggests a framework for reconciling parental control over religious observance and training with the state's duty to protect the child's best interests. First, it examines the history of English and American child custody law and analyzes modern custody cases in which religion is a factor. Next, it addresses the alarming recent attempt by courts to resolve religious disputes with a shared custody approach, awarding 'spiritual custody' to one parent and 'physical custody' to the other. Finally, this article proposes a contractual …